FullReads

Next morning we three started south. We stayed a couple of days at Ned Baker’s station on the border, and then started on our three-hundred-mile ride down-country. The weather was still very hot, so we decided to travel at night for a while, and left Ned’s place at dusk. He parted from us at the homestead gate. He gave Andy a small packet, done up in canvas, for Mrs Baker, which Andy told me contained Bob’s pocket-book, letters, and papers. We looked back, after we’d gone a piece along the dusty road, and saw Ned still standing by the gate; and a very lonely figure he looked. Ned was a bachelor. ‘Poor old Ned,’ said Andy to me. ‘He was in love with Mrs Bob Baker before she got married, but she picked the wrong man–girls mostly do. Ned and Bob were together on the Macquarie, but Ned left when his brother married, and he’s been up in these God-forsaken scrubs ever since. Look, I want to tell you something, Jack: Ned has written to Mrs Bob to tell her that Bob died of fever, and everything was done for him that could be done, and that he died easy–and all that sort of thing. Ned sent her some money, and she is to think that it was the money due to Bob when he died. Now I’ll have to go and see her when we get to Solong; there’s no getting out of it, I’ll have to face her–and you’ll have to come with me.’

‘Damned if I will!’ I said.

‘But you’ll have to,’ said Andy. ‘You’ll have to stick to me; you’re surely not crawler enough to desert a mate in a case like this? I’ll have to lie like hell–I’ll have to lie as I never lied to a woman before; and you’ll have to back me and corroborate every lie.’

I’d never seen Andy show so much emotion.

‘There’s plenty of time to fix up a good yarn,’ said Andy. He said no more about Mrs Baker, and we only mentioned the Boss’s name casually, until we were within about a day’s ride of Solong; then Andy told me the yarn he’d made up about the Boss’s death.

‘And I want you to listen, Jack,’ he said, ‘and remember every word–and if you can fix up a better yarn you can tell me afterwards. Now it was like this: the Boss wasn’t too well when he crossed the border. He complained of pains in his back and head and a stinging pain in the back of his neck, and he had dysentery bad,–but that doesn’t matter; it’s lucky I ain’t supposed to tell a woman all the symptoms. The Boss stuck to the job as long as he could, but we managed the cattle and made it as easy as we could for him. He’d just take it easy, and ride on from camp to camp, and rest. One night I rode to a town off the route (or you did, if you like) and got some medicine for him; that made him better for a while, but at last, a day or two this side of Mulgatown, he had to give up. A squatter there drove him into town in his buggy and put him up at the best hotel. The publican knew the Boss and did all he could for him–put him in the best room and wired for another doctor. We wired for Ned as soon as we saw how bad the Boss was, and Ned rode night and day and got there three days before the Boss died. The Boss was a bit off his head some of the time with the fever, but was calm and quiet towards the end and died easy. He talked a lot about his wife and children, and told us to tell the wife not to fret but to cheer up for the children’s sake. How does that sound?’